Oil Can Boyd said last week he believed Ron Darling’s accusations that Lenny Dykstra yelled racial epithets from the Mets’ on-deck circle ahead of Game 3 of the 1986 World Series.
But there was probably a reason the Red Sox pitcher didn’t hear them himself as he warmed up on the mound at Fenway Park.
According to his 2012 book, “They Call Me Oil Can: Baseball, Drugs, and Life on the Edge,” Boyd had plenty of other things occupying his mind on that fateful day.
A selection from the book dug up by WEEI’s Evan Drellich shows there was family drama — his father had brought his stepmother despite Oil Can’s protests — that would have been enough to throw anyone off their game.
“Plus, I had stayed up all night smoking cocaine. So I was double upset and irritated,” he wrote, saying the ordeal had him so upset, he couldn’t “concentrate enough to warm up in the bullpen.”
It’s no wonder Boyd didn’t hear anything being yelled his way, a fact he revealed on WFAN’s “Carlin, Maggie and Bart” show on WFAN on April 2.
“I’m warming up for a ballgame and I’m preparing to go out and try to get the New York Mets out one at a time and that’s all that’s on my mind,” he said. “To see any kind of gestures made toward me coming from the opposing dugout, I didn’t see anything like that nor was I looking for anything like that. This is all new to me.”
After The Post published an excerpt from Darling’s book “108 Stitches,” Dykstra decided to sue his former teammate, with several other members of the World Series-winning Mets choosing sides.